Siddhartha eBook

Siddhartha had learned to trade, to use his power
over people, to enjoy himself with a woman, he had
learned to wear beautiful clothes, to give orders
to servants, to bathe in perfumed waters. He
had learned to eat tenderly and carefully prepared
food, even fish, even meat and poultry, spices and
sweets, and to drink wine, which causes sloth and
forgetfulness. He had learned to play with dice
and on a chess-board, to watch dancing girls, to have
himself carried about in a sedan-chair, to sleep on
a soft bed. But still he had felt different from
and superior to the others; always he had watched
them with some mockery, some mocking disdain, with
the same disdain which a Samana constantly feels for
the people of the world. When Kamaswami was ailing,
when he was annoyed, when he felt insulted, when he
was vexed by his worries as a merchant, Siddhartha
had always watched it with mockery. Just slowly
and imperceptibly, as the harvest seasons and rainy
seasons passed by, his mockery had become more tired,
his superiority had become more quiet. Just
slowly, among his growing riches, Siddhartha had assumed
something of the childlike people’s ways for
himself, something of their childlikeness and of their
fearfulness. And yet, he envied them, envied
them just the more, the more similar he became to them.
He envied them for the one thing that was missing
from him and that they had, the importance they were
able to attach to their lives, the amount of passion
in their joys and fears, the fearful but sweet happiness
of being constantly in love. These people were
all of the time in love with themselves, with women,
with their children, with honours or money, with plans
or hopes. But he did not learn this from them,
this out of all things, this joy of a child and this
foolishness of a child; he learned from them out of
all things the unpleasant ones, which he himself despised.
It happened more and more often that, in the morning
after having had company the night before, he stayed
in bed for a long time, felt unable to think and tired.
It happened that he became angry and impatient, when
Kamaswami bored him with his worries. It happened
that he laughed just too loud, when he lost a game
of dice. His face was still smarter and more
spiritual than others, but it rarely laughed, and
assumed, one after another, those features which are
so often found in the faces of rich people, those
features of discontent, of sickliness, of ill-humour,
of sloth, of a lack of love. Slowly the disease
of the soul, which rich people have, grabbed hold of
him.

Like a veil, like a thin mist, tiredness came over
Siddhartha, slowly, getting a bit denser every day,
a bit murkier every month, a bit heavier every year.
As a new dress becomes old in time, loses its beautiful
colour in time, gets stains, gets wrinkles, gets worn
off at the seams, and starts to show threadbare spots
here and there, thus Siddhartha’s new life,
which he had started after his separation from Govinda,
had grown old, lost colour and splendour as the years
passed by, was gathering wrinkles and stains, and
hidden at bottom, already showing its ugliness here
and there, disappointment and disgust were waiting.
Siddhartha did not notice it. He only noticed
that this bright and reliable voice inside of him,
which had awoken in him at that time and had ever
guided him in his best times, had become silent.